Curt Hawkins, recently released from WWE, was a guest on the Shining Wizards Network. During the interview, Hawkins discussed his departure from WWE, his work with NXT, the pror wrestling academy he started, plus what it was like working with some of the top names in the industry.

Here are some of the highlights of the Curt Hawkins interview:

The creation of Create A Pro Wrestling School: Not being booked in The WWE, I became completely paranoid and fearful of being called on the road and being out of ring shape. And any wrestler knows that you can't really duplicate what we do in the ring conditioning-wise. You can't duplicate wrestling unless you wrestle. To be honest with you, I just wanted a place to train. One night, Pat Buck and I were just spitballing at dinner after a training session at The Pro Wrestling Syndicate School in Rahway, NJ, and I said I'd love to open a school in New York, and Pat Said he'd love to do it with me and I was like, "ok" and it just caught fire from there. It was something I was always going to do and it was always a dream of mine to open a wrestling school, and it might have happened a little sooner than I ever thought, but now that I have it and we're cooking on all cylinders and I get the satisfaction of teaching guys, and seeing guys develop and understand stuff. I can't wait 'til these guys to have matches.

Working with top names like Edge & Undertaker: It was a once in a lifetime, indescribable, priceless learning experience. I can tell you honestly that I probably pitched 400 ideas the whole time I was in WWE and that was the ONE time they said, "Yeah sure" when we pitched can we be Edge's henchmen. You know we'll look like him and they actually went with it. That's how hard it is to get things going. I don't know what it is or why they say yes or no. Sometimes I feel like they need to be the ones that have the idea for it to work it but I'm forever grateful for it because the opportunity was indescribable. I mean, I wrestled Shawn Michaels & Ric Flair in a steel cage in Chicago. I've wrestled The Undertaker more times than I can remember. I basically shadowed Edge for an entire year seeing him prepare for world title matches on PPVs and WrestleMania. I saw it all first hand. It was an incredible learning environment that could never be duplicated again. I'll always be grateful for that.

NXT: I loved NXT and performing and being a part of the shows. The live arena crowd is absolutely awesome. They are lively and passionate fans and that's all you can ask for as a performer. I had no interest in being a part of NXT and training or things like that because I'm ten years in and I don't think I need to be in there going over headlocks and armdrags, or taking unnecessary bumps that I don't need to be taking.

His WWE release: It was expected to an extent. Really I feel like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders. They weren't using me and I was just living this life of sitting and waiting around and not able to commit to things in my real life. Like if I wanted to go a wedding, I never know if they (WWE) are going to come calling. It was kind of annoying, to be honest with you. And anyone that knows me knows that I'm just crazy about wrestling, and I've had my pulse on the Indy scene and it's something I've been dying to dive into and now I finally can.